PREFACE 



"Truly, the waste and destruction of our woods, has been so univer- 

 sal, that I conceive nothing less than an universal Plantation of all the 

 sorts of Trees will supply, and well encounter the defect ; and therefore 

 I shall here adventure to speak something in general of them all ; though 

 I chiefly insist upon the propagation of such only as seem to be the 

 most wanting, and serviceable to the end proposed. EVELYN'S Silva, 

 4th Edit. , 1 706, v. Introduction. 



CONSIDERING the amount of attention which, 

 especially during the last six or seven years, has 

 been given to forestry in Britain, the appearance of a 

 small work embodying the leading principles of sylvi- 

 culture as applied to the principal species of forest 

 trees should hardly require any apology. 



In the following pages are set forth in as short and 

 concise a manner as seemed to the author intelligible 

 and practically useful, the chief sylvicultural character- 

 istics of our timber trees according to the present 

 advanced state of the knowledge of forest science 

 in Germany. This makes no pretension of being 

 a work of original research or of observation based on 

 long experience in the treatment of forests in Britain. 

 It is, and only professes to be, to a considerable extent, 

 a compilation from the best German sources ; but the 

 author can at any rate vouch for the correctness of 

 the scientific principles enunciated, from his personal 



